Quotes from Dorothy Dunnett

You need bed and a hot drink and a little less fluent self-pity.

Unlike Francis Crawford, whose game with life was a strange and rootless affair played with the intellect, Jerott had a passionate instinct to live. It was a happy circumstance also that his nervous and bronchial systems were roughly as frail as a bison's.

The guiding hand at one's pony; the voice at one's porridge bowl; the splendid athlete one watched from one's books in the cold tower window, while outside in the sunshine he rode at the ring, threw his spears, matched his sword with the master-at-arms. The brother who had cared for him, a grown man in illness, and defended him against calumny, and who at length, heartbroken at his defection, had turned his back on him a year ago in Scotland.

Lymond's life was lived on this level: the level on which the future of whole communities could be steered or reshaped, improved or jeopardized by a handful of people.

In order to rule, one must face reality.

What's poor Richard ever done to you except get himself born first?" The blue eyes were speculative. "Ill-calculated," he agreed. "But not necessarily final.

We?' said Chancellor. 'I am lavishly paid,' Danny said, 'to think in the first person plural.

Your blasted Nanny should have taught you what mine did,' said Lymond. 'The things you enjoy most aren't good for you.

Richard doesn't like me either," said the fair one sorrowfully. "But that's unmannerly rank for you. Do you like Richard?" "I'm married to him!" "That's why I asked. You don't believe in polyandry by any chance?

So this was Richard's brother. Every line of him spoke, palimpsest-wise, with two voices. The clothes, black and rich, were vaguely slovenly; the skin sun-glazed and cracked; the fine eyes slackly lidded; the mouth insolent and self-indulgent. He returned the scrutiny without rancour.

Immoderation, Mariotta, is a thief of money and intestinal joy, but who'd check it? Not I. Here I am, weeping soft tears of myrrh, to prove it.

If time allowed, I should be delighted to discuss my private life in every choice particular with all of you, but it really isn't relevant.

It's true? You have no interest in him? But everyone either abominates Francis Crawford or longs to possess him. I wonder why you alone should be immune.

It seems we are sparing no cliché. You impertinent oaf of a schoolboy.… It's because you can't have Francis Crawford that you want me. That's all.

I wish to drink to celebrate another proof of something I hold to be true: that what is mathematical is divine, and what is divine is mathematical, and that a transfusion of both creates the flame which is known as beauty.

Whoever is unsupported by the Mystery of Love shall not achieve the grace of salvation. Whoever shall cast love aside shall lose everything.

I have only to dismount, and be sick, and then I am, as ever, your man.

Five years ago your brother Lymond was found to have been selling his own country for years: he's been kicked from land to land committing every crime on the calendar and now he's back here, God forgive him, with filthier habits and a nastier mind than he set out with.

Danny Hislop was not there, nor the artist called Blacklock. Riding between Lymond and the fresh-faced Knight of St John who did not like eagles, Chancellor asked after them. Ludovic d'Harcourt glanced at Lymond without answering. Lymond said, 'They are undergoing a course of correction. If in the event they are either correct or in the least chastened, I shall be surprised.

It won't be a very good army because it'll have one eye on the Lothian lairds and one eye on the Douglases. And by God, Richard Crawford," ended Buccleuch with a growl that lifted the pigeons off the turrets, "if they've got to watch you too, there'll be a wheen of skelly-eyed Scotsmen at the Golden Gates in the next few weeks.

I don't like being permanently mutilated on Thursdays. I may add that Friday is my day for raping; and I like it quieter than this, and they enjoy it.

For spirits one requires a strong head or else a weak brain, and I fear I possess neither.

You lead, therefore you kill.

Strophe and counterstrophe reached their epode.